Recently in Books Category

I LOVE it. OK, I was really going to love it when I ordered four books off Amazon before the thing even showed up with the promise it would sync in the box and have them when I unwrapped it which DID NOT happen, but after I went driving in the snow and got cell reception, they popped up and BAM! There they were. Now if only Kindle's design team had called their friends over at the iPhone salon 'cause as a reviewer described it in GQ: "...it looks like my old Tandy computer from 1981". Cream of oyster soup color in an electronic gadget is like an avocado fridge in the 70's.

But I love it!

"Magic, madam, is like wine and, if you are not used to it, it will make you drunk."
Clarke, S., 2006, The Ladies of Grace Adieu

Susanna Clarke has written her follow up to "Johnathan Strange & Mr Norell", a door-stop of a hardback that I finally made my way through this summer. Her outing this time is a sliver compared to that previous block of text, charmingly titled, "The Ladies of Grace Adieu". It's a great concept of short stories that build off the 19th century concept of theoretical versus practical magic in good British Society. The best part of the book is that it is filled with charming illustrations which I find delightful. I'm becoming more and more enamored of good illustrations. Who doesn't like a picture book?

"Page 31 - Love Should Not be Stimulated. Do not excite your love by foreign stimulants. The influences of love and wine should never be united. Men, when under the excitement of intoxicating liquors, are not in full possession of all their faculties: they have excited their animal propensities, and by so doing have rendered the manifestations of their feelings brutal. There is no woman of sense and purity throughout the land, but must, having the knowledge of the debasing influences of ardent spirits, the foul and demoniac crimes which have been committed under the auspices of drunkenness, view the attentions of persons under this animal excitement as an insult of the blackest kind."

M.B. Allen, MD & A.C. McGregor, MD., 1912. Girlhood to Motherhood or Love, Marriage and Maternity, containing Full Information on all the Marvelous and Complex Matters Pertaining to Women, including Creative science; Bearing; Nursing and Rearing Children; Hereditary Descent; Hints on Courtship and Marriage; Promoting Health and Beauty; Vigor of Mind and Body, etc., etc., Together with the Diseases Peculiar to the Female Sex, Their Causes, Symptoms and Treatment; the Whole Forming a Complete Medical Guide for Women

Special Topics in Calamity Physics

Worth the read, and once committed, stay for it until the end. GREAT read.

It figures that by making Jeff read HP:THBP outloud during the drive back to the city last night, I've now gone and gotten myself hooked into the series. Admittedly, I didn't read HP 5 and really must have skimmed HP 4 more then actually read it because I don't remember much from it but in the first three chapters of the latest one, I kept asking Jeff for a recap (worthless since he couldn't seem to fill me in much) because I felt maddenly out of the loop about some of the characters. Now I'm committed to going back and rereading the fourth and fifth books to get caught up.

Just so it is plainly stated; this is par for the course with me. I'm ALWAYS a late-adopter of anything whether socially, emotionally, personally, or professionally.

No spoilers ahead.

Jeff managed to find the last copy of HP:THBP at Wal-Mart last night...in the returned items bin, which is just how his luck runs. Not being a crazed fan of HP like others (which there is nothing wrong with being a crazed HP fan), I simply applied my bibliophile detective powers and skimmed the second to last chapter which confirmed a major plot point. Then I skimmed the chapter index, found the chapter that included the "Half-blood Prince" and skimmed that one to find out who fits the bill.

Yes I did, yes I did. I'm just that bad of a person. Of course I'll read the whole thing but now I can enjoy it without Rowling's trickery and red-herrings. Of course the other benefit is now I can taunt Jeff, the bigger HP fan between the two of us, with, "I know who the HPB is," or "Guess who...,".

I sort of want to call up some crazed HP friends to do the same but I'm afraid I'd have a hit put on me.

I know I was all crazy over this book a while back and I'm glad, for the most part, that I found it and read it because if I hadn't, I think there would be this lingering doubt in my mind that I was missing THE read of the summer, but honestly, now that I'm done with it, I'm sort of like..."whatever". That's not exactly a resounding recommendation.

I mean, I didn't hate it and I did finish it so that says something. I think over all, it was just underwhelming. I was emailing Max about it today and mentioned that either I had skimmed over something or misinterpretted it because several of the big "reveals" in the plot I'd already assumed were known. I'd get to the reveal and be like, "huh? We didn't already know that?". I don't know what that exactly says but it doesn't really go in the "pro" column.

And the bit about it being longish and Dracula not appearing until well into it? Try page 595 out of a 637-page book. Seriously. I'm all for foreplay but my God.

Overall I liked the idea of the book. It has a good, fresh take on the historical significance of vampirism and the acedemic approach has a distinct feeling of Tartt's "Secret History". I think in the end, this will make a better movie then it does a book which is saying something.

I'm now onto two books of short stories. Owen Kings, "We're All In This Together" which so far is excellent. I was willing to give him a try because he's Stephen King's son, and I'm happy to say he takes teh best writing quality of his dad and makes it is own. It's familiar but still new in a way I like. So much in fact that I actaully emailed the publisher to find out if he's doing any book-signings. He apparently lives in Brooklyn so I hope that's good for at least one New York reading.

The other book is "Children Playing In Front Of a Statue of Hercules" which is edited by David Sedaris. He's chosen his favorite short stories and published a book to support 826NYC. There are some excellent shorts in it that I'm just starting to pick away at so I'm looking forward to be able to report back how excellent it is overall.

For the past few weeks I'd been hearing about THE summer book to read. It had something to do with vampires but wasn't an Anne Rice book (emphatically underscored and italicized every time the word 'vampire' was used, as if she has a trademark on vampire stories). Of course when I got to San Francisco and actually needed something fun to read, I couldn't remember the name of the book but how hard could finding THE summer read of the season be? Especially about vampires (and not an Anne Rice book).

Hard, it seems. I had a vague recollection that the book was called "Haunted" however that search only brought up Chuck Palahniuk's new tome which was not what I was looking for (I'd read a review that cited a bit he wrote concerning a boy in a pool using a vacuum hose rectally and then something, blah, blah, blah...not a good summer read, I thought). So I went to B&N close to the hotel and asked a few of the clerks, using words like, "THE summer read this year, vampires, female author (not Anne Rice), getting good reviews" and yet all I got was blank stares and no help. I Googled those words too and still got nothing and started to believe perhaps I'd just made it up and was actually hearing my subconscious telling ME that I needed to write a great vampire story that would become THE summer read for the season making me the new Anne Rice for the vampire masses. Unfortunately I don't have one original idea for vampires that hasn't been done to death (or undeath for those punny punsters out there) so that isn't a great place to start.

Luckily for me, when all seems lost, insomnia strikes as it did this morning (hello 3am, so good to see you again and so soon) and with nothing better to do then troll around looking at bear porn and reading blogs, I finally found the book I was looking for. At Amazon.com, after two fucking clicks which proves that just going to Amazon.com first solves everything, book-related or not. Of course now that my new term at school has started (Information Systems for Management if anyone is interested) my fun reading days are over until the end of July but still, it's nice to know I wasn't making any of it up. The book is called "The Historian" and it's not by Anne Rice.

Bonnie got me with the book meme. And she's right: I have all kinds of time for this so here goes:

1. How many books have you owned in your life?
I've never really counted but I'm sure I have somewhere in the neighborhood of several hundred...probably closer to five hundred. All my selves are overflowing now.
2.& 3. What's the last book that you bought and read?
I'm putting these together because I read the last one I bought. "Lives of the Popes". Cliche and obvious, I know, but I was caught up in all the Pope-la these past few months and wanted to know more about them. I'm really looking for the book about all the bad, evil Popes now.
4. List 5 books that mean a lot to you.
All time favorite book is "Virgin Suicides". Then I break out into Antrim's "Hundred Brothers", Hoffman's "Practical Magic", King's "The Green Mile", and Lamott's "Traveling Mercies".
5. I'm going to save the tags up and redeem them for inappropriate naked blogger pictures.

Anyone who knows anything about me knows I get totally hard for Augusten Burroughs, author of "Running With Scissors", "Dry", and his new memoir, "Magical Thinking". A good friend actually accosted him at a publishing convention last spring and got an autographed early copy of "Magical Thinking" for me along with a CD of him reading the book. It's on the shelf next to my bear porn and is interchangeable, for all intents and purposes. My questions to my friend about meeting Ausgusten were never about his writing or that nonsense but always about how he looked and acted. He is the embodiment of the word "humpy" and "snack" and while I'm not into breaking relationships up, I'd be lying if I said I didn't wish Augusten's partner, also humpy and snacky by the way, would go the way of the Dodo. I'm that shallow and jealous. Augusten just makes being mad crazy so fucking sexy. It's definitely his slant and it's working just fine for me.

Which is why, since I've known he was having a reading and signing in New York last night, I've been planning on attending. I didn't need the autograph and I know what he sounds like reading his stories, but I did want to go and just be that pathetic voyeur. I wanted to watch him and imagine I'm his best friend and I'm the one he calls to bitch and complain. I have room for some fun, humpy best friends like that. That's why I'm such a doofus to let something like my statistics class best me and keep me from going, preferring to continue my strive for excellence and finish my article analysis paper on profiling the distance learning MBA student. Bo-RING. I missed Augusten for a fucking paper? A paper about nothing? That's totally, totally wrong.

My only consolation is that in the real world, I'm deathly sure Augusten and I wouldn't mix. He's who he is and I who I am and in my mind's eye, those to worlds don't seem to intertwine. I have a much better sense of someday becoming good friends with Oprah than I do with Augusten, strange as that sounds. So I'm fine with using him as pornographic fodder and damp daydreams and will maybe catch him on his next tour for the next book. Who knows.

Best Book Read in a Long Time: A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson. Accessible, well-written dips into all things science from astronomy, physics, ecology, biology, evolution, and everything in between. But the thing that makes this book SO great is all the great back stories about the scientists making the discoveries. It's encouraging to know that in most instances, scientists and science in general is all based on assumptions and theories which will ultimately be proved wrong when the next smarter person comes along with new ideas and theories. And the stories about those scientists are hilarious. Really, it's surprising that a book about such dry stuff can be so engaging. Definitely worth a read.

Here's the skinny about me and the almost obsession with Jordan's Wheel of Time series: I not only own every one of the ten volumes in hardcover, I also own every one of the available titles, nine right now, in paperback. And not only do I own them in paperback, I own double copies of the first three volumes. The hardcovers sit on the main book shelf with all my Edding's volumes, King titles, and the other assorted books I like to stare at when I can't look at the computer screen any longer. The paperback versions are kept in the attic until the yearly reading begins and then I haul them out and store them in a pile on the floor until the reading is done. When I'm at home, I read the hardcovers and when I'm mobile, the paperbacks go with me. I had started the yearly read before I went home to care for Mom but when I got there and finally realized my short trip was going to be a long stay, it was simply easier to go out and buy new paperback copies of a few titles rather then send for them.

Jeff, who really hates how many books I buy and collect, was not aware until I moved back to Bashert that I'd bought new copies and now had doubles. He couldn't even get his mind around it and I was left alone.

The plus side to buying duplicates for those particular paperbacks was not completely lost on me. I sort of stalled on Book 4, The Shadow Rises, when Mom started getting oogy and the constant spine-cracking and page-flipping when I wasn't really reading took it's toll. These huge 800+ page books normally come unglued and split but this one just simple came apart into three solid chunks and page 78 just came off all alone. Then the cover ripped and fell off. So for the last two and a half months, I've been carting the whole of the book around, bound up by wide, dirty rubber bands. The whole thing, not just the section I was reading which doesn't make sense to me other than I'm the kind of person who would collect the hardcover and paperback versions of the same title so I'm going to read a whole book, cover and all, even if it has to be held together with duct tape and ka-ka.

It's all moot now though, since I finally finished that fucking, God-forsaken door-jamb of a book last night and have moved into Book 5: The Fires of Heaven in which I'll be enjoying 956 pages of the Lucifer-like Evil One slow-roasting the world in all it's sweating, drought-inducing fever. Not exactly the timing I'd like going into a summer that promises to be as hot and humid as living on the sun, but if I don't get through all these so I can finally read the tenth book which came out in January of this year, I'm going to poke my eyes out with a dirty stick.